


Sleepover?

by heartbeatslows



Category: Paranatural (Webcomic)
Genre: M/M, Secret Santa, two boys are bffs and very much twelve years old
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-26
Updated: 2016-12-26
Packaged: 2018-09-12 07:34:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,814
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9062596
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heartbeatslows/pseuds/heartbeatslows
Summary: Isaac wants to get Max's attention, but he's not quite sure how to do it…maybe if they show up in the same place enough times, something will happen?





	

**Author's Note:**

> Written for @lilypupart for the Paranatural Secret Santa! Sorry that this came so late in the day–I hope you still like it!

“So, has Spender gotten back to you yet?” Isabel asked. She was leaning against the locker bank, with her shoulder at almost exactly combination-lock-height. Max wondered how that wasn’t painful, then chalked it up to her being too cool to feel pain and moved on.  
“No, not yet. He said he’d speak to me about it at lunch today, but I haven’t heard from him yet so IIIIIIIIIIsaac. Isaac. What are you doing here.”  
Isaac emerged from behind Max’s locker door where he’d been hiding to stand uncomfortably close to Max. “’Sup, spectral friends. How are we doing this fine lunch break?”  
“We’re just fine. Thanks for checking in. That seemed like poignant information for you to know before you go off with your own friends to your own lunch; alone; you’re in eighth grade; why are you hanging around us.”  
“Not today,” Isaac said flippantly. “Today, I sacrifice my prominent and fruitful eighth-grade-exclusive social life to hang out with you, Max, a new kid and a seventh grader who’s already decided he’s too cool for everyone here.”  
“Raise your hand if you can do a backflip over a stair rail, friends,” Max announced, opening the comment to the whole hallway. Coincidentally, everyone else in the hallway raised her hand, as the only other person in the hallway was Isabel.  
“Yes, I know you can, dear,” Max said, patting Isabel’s not-raised hand. “That’s why I hang out with you. Isaac, however, needs to justify his presence here with some other form of compensation, for example gifts, flattery, humble supplication…”  
“He’s here as eye candy,” Isabel offered. Both she and Max guffawed, to Isaac’s irritation.  
“Well, weirdo, you don’t have a choice. Come on, let’s start in the music room.”  
“This school has a music room?”  
“It’s nowhere near as clean or as well-funded as the gym, but yes, we do.”  
“Not as clean as the gym…” Max wondered under his breath. “Anyway, you still haven’t told me what I’m doing here.”  
“Spender hasn’t told him yet?” Isabel interjected. “You’re not going to the cafeteria today, Max. You’re on lunch patrol. Isaac is going to be showing you the ropes.”  
“Lunch patrol? Lunch patrol? Why does that sound like work during my only free period of the day?”  
“I would have thought Spender’s class counted as a free period, considering you haven’t done a single one of his assignments since you got here,” Isabel reminded him.  
“Neither have you,” Max countered. “I thought maybe it was an Activity Club thing.”  
“It is,” Isaac agreed. “Come on, let’s talk while we walk. Here’s your lunch…”  
“Okay, if you can get me something other than cold tomato sauce and wrapped asparagus, I’m in,” Max said. “To the music room, Isaac.”

* * *

 [Isabel, 12:41] So, what are you doing?  
[Isaac, 12:42] No idea what you’re talking about.  
[Isabel, 12:42] There’s no such thing as lunch patrol. You know that. I know that. Eventually Max is going to learn that. Why did you want me to tell him to follow you?  
[Isaac, 12:44] All in due time, grasshopper.  
[Isaac, 12:46] Thanks, Isabel. I owe you one  
[Isabel, 12:46] Np  
[Isabel, 12:48] Also my name’s Izzy  
[Isabel, 12:48] Everyone calls me that and I don’t really get why you still insist on calling me by my full name when I’ve known you for as long as you’ve been a spectral  
[Isaac, 12:49] Read at 12:49 pm  
[Isabel, 12:49] yOu dOn’t havE tO sENd thE REaD reCIEpts yOurSElf  
[Isaac, 12:50] Read at 12:50 pm

* * *

“Welcome to the band room,” Isaac declared, throwing the door open dramatically.  
Max kicked an open flute container contemptuously. “Smells like stale lunch and sweat. Nerd sweat, not exercise sweat.”  
Isaac acted as though Max hadn’t spoken, looking around the room with an unreadable expression. He pointed his fingers at a tiny woodpecker ghost and let loose a mini bolt of lighting. The ghost flapped away before the shock could connect, screeching with a sound that was halfway between a bird and some kind of tooth-shattering death instrument.  
Max scrutinized the expression on Isaac’s face, but he never had it easy getting a read on the kid. He seemed…not annoyed, exactly–frustrated. “You okay?”  
“Perfect,” Isaac said, giving him a bland smile. He waved a hand to herd Max out of the band room. “Patrol. Starting today, newbie, you are privy to the terrible privileges of being a spectral. Protecting civilians from all the dangers they know of, and all the ones they’ll never find out about.”  
“Great. So we’re pretty much just walking in circles all lunch period?”  
“Pretty much,” Isaac agreed.  
“Cool.”  
Max looked around, struck as he sometimes was by the magnitude of ghosts around him. There were ghosts everywhere–quirky ghosts that once were human, like the guy with six arms juggling two disjoined halves of a tiny teacher-ghost; three fish ghosts gliding backward through the air without moving their fins; a chimpanzee with a hunched back inexplicably grabbing onto a loose tile in the ceiling. Max watched it for a moment before turning to ask Isaac how that was possible.  
Isaac stared. “Either the tile’s a tool, which I doubt,” he said, “or that monkey is a poltergeist.”  
“It’s a chimpanzee,” Max corrected.  
“It’s a ghost. Who cares.” Isaac held out his right hand, gathering blue wisps of energy around his palm. “What really matters–” he aimed his finger at the ghost– “is whether it’s going to be a problem.” He loosed a spec-shot at the chimp with a bang.  
The chimp dropped to the ground, bounced and skidded on the linoleum, then searched for his attacker, rubbing his rump. His eyes fell on the two spectrals and he bared three rows of inset fangs.  
“So, poltergei–ack!”  
Max threw his hands in front of his face on a reflex. His arm smacked the chimp in the face, keeping him out of range of all of those teeth, but not quite safe from the rest of the hulking ghost. A sharp pain crawled up the side of Max’s stomach and he shouted, flailing wildly, wishing he hadn’t been so stupid as to patrol without his bat in reach.  
“Gotcha!”  
The heavy mass was thrown off Max’s torso in one swift motion. He opened his eyes just in time to see Isaac vault over his body and drive his knee into the poltergeist’s gut.  
Isaac drove his elbow into the poltergeist’s nose, slamming its head against the ground in the process. Then, while it tried to clear its head, he pumped it full of electricity until it exploded underneath him.  
Isaac stood up, tense and breathing heavy, looking exactly like someone who had just vanquished a beastly foe. Max shut his eyes and rested his head on the floor until he got the wind back into him.  
“You okay?”  
“Probably, but I’m going to take a breather. Just until the world stops spinning. We could be here a while.”  
Isaac’s hand gripped Max’s shoulder to push him up. Max let him get him into a seated position, then the two of them dragged-slash-scooted Max to the edge of the hallway, where he could lean on the lockers.  
Max grunted and pointed with closed-eyes to his side. At least, he thought it was his side; his proprioception wouldn’t be at peak performance for a while.  
“Just a scratch.”  
Max rolled his eyes behind his eyelids. “Great. All that effort and I don’t even get a battle scar?”  
“That probably isn’t even going to scab,” Isaac said. “Barely needs a Band-aid.” Was it Max’s imagination, or did he sound disappointed?  
“Ow! Stop poking it!”

* * *

Max’s dad knocked on the door to his room. “Come downstairs! There’s someone here from your school!”  
Max paused. He was at his desk, a dim bulb shining bare over three sets of homework. (He was serious about not doing Spender’s homework; much like Spender himself, it was a joke no matter how he tried to disguise it.)  
He hadn’t been expecting a visitor. He didn’t invite people to his house, especially considering how bizarre the students at his school were, all of them, without exception. Odds were good that whoever this guest was, he didn’t want them to feel entitled to stroll into his corner store without warning.  
“Who is it, PJ?” Max whispered.  
“Oh! Oh, I see, you want me to spy for you because I’m invisible and no one will know if I’m watching them!”  
“Yeah, good job. Now, the whole spying gig doesn’t really work unless you actually go see who it is, so…”  
“Oh! Of course! Yes, Mr. Max, I will certainly help you…”  
As PJ sank into the floor, Max shook his head fondly. The gesture felt oddly paternal. Ew, weird.  
PJ’s wide-eyed head appeared from the base of the floor, eyes even wider than usual. “Um…Mr. Max?”  
“What happened?”  
PJ wrung his hands together apologetically. “I’m…pretty sure they saw me.”  
“Oh,” Max said. His first instinct was to be nervous that someone had caught him spying, but then he realized the only people who would have seen a ghost were spectrals. “Oh. Activity Club.” And they already knew where he lived. “Okay, good job, PJ.”  
Max jumped over the banister to the bottom floor of their building, pretending not to notice how gleeful PJ got when he said “good job.”  
“Ah, Maximilian,” his dad said pleasantly. “This bro Isaac says the two of you are hang-buds.”  
“I’m not even going to comment on all the things you said wrong there,” Max announced. Isaac waved when Max stepped into the main area of the store, but Max only narrowed his eyes in response. “And, yeah, we see each other at school. Pretty much only at school. So…”  
“You two should have a sleepover!” Max’s dad suggested, beaming encouragingly at his son. Look at Max’s friend! Max is making friends! read his face, bright-eyed and optimistic.  
“Let’s not be hasty,” Max responded, at the same time as Isaac was saying, “A sleepover would be fun.” Max gave Isaac his pointiest dagger-eyes, but Isaac–even more pointedly–didn’t make eye contact.  
“Perfect!” His dad clasped his hands together in an overtly joyous gesture that left Max, as he often did, wanting to hide behind a rock. “Isaac, you can probably fit into one of the many, many outfits we’re waiting for Max to grow into. We’re having pizza tonight!”  
“We have pizza every other night. My dad can’t cook,” Max whispered to Isaac.  
“I figured. The tomato sauce and raw veggie lunches don’t exactly scream domestic prowess.”  
“…Shut up.”

* * *

One thing Max had learned was that the rest of the Activity Club didn’t tend to let him down. Yet he hadn’t expected to actually enjoy having Isaac sleep over.  
Isaac had been invited into the family’s Friday night board game and was even allowed to choose the game. He opted for Scrabble over Sorry!, on the grounds that it would be a gentler first impression, but after he proved to be by far the most literate of the group, he quickly owned his victory and mercilessly slaughtered Max’s family.  
“In my own home,” Max’s father lamented, crying into Zoey's soda.  
“Whatever. If I didn’t spend so much time outside my house, talking to other living humans, I’d probably be good at Scrabble too,” Max scoffed.  
“If you take beating an eight-year-old at a word game as an achievement, that’s your own problem,” Zoey added.  
Isaac simply collected the tiles in his palm, having earned the right to clear the board. “I guess the snarky comments run in the family?”  
Isaac grinned at Max, his face a pure distillation of eagerness to please. Feeling compelled to acknowledge the joke, Max chuckled, but he couldn’t find the humor in it. The snarky comments had come from his mom's side.  
All at once Isaac seemed to recall the situation and hesitated, heat rising in his face. The silence could have stretched indefinitely had Max’s dad–oblivious to the tension, or willing to play the part–not sent Zoey off to bed.  
“You two, too,” he said, pointing to the boys with the corner of a pizza slice. “Sleeping bags are in Max’s room. Oh, Isaac, in terms of toothbrushes, would you mind–”  
Caught in the midst of his lingering embarrassment Isaac blurted out, “I’d prefer not to share, sir,” then crimsoned deeper under Max’s father’s bewildered look.  
“You could run down to Isabel’s. She and the other four might get lonely without you,” Max whispered, happy to have the snark high ground once more.  
“I was going to suggest you run downstairs and take a toothbrush from the shop,” Max’s father explained.  
“That’s a very good idea, sir.” Isaac took the opportunity to compose himself away from the others. Zoey grabbed the account book, as it had long since fallen to her to keep track of what went in and out of the store. Their father was on his way to the kitchen, but took the opportunity to give Max a huge, encouraging, so-glad-you’re-making-friends smile. Max pulled his baseball cap further down his head.  
The boys were ushered into Max’s room, where they settled down in sleeping bags next to one another. The lights went out, but the room wasn’t quite dark. Every ghost that passed through the walls lit the room in eerie pallor. It occurred to Max that no one could see the light but the two of them.  
Max stifled a yawn. Beside him, he heard Isaac release one and glanced over at him. Isaac was lying on his back, eyes pointed toward Max’s in a mirror image of Max’s own position. He smiled, an enigma, and for a moment Max was irate.  
“Why are you here?” he blurted out.  
The Mona Lisa smile fell from Isaac’s face. He seemed ashamed, and rightly so, thought a surly part of Max’s mind. “Why did you show up at the store today? I mean, you didn’t even buy anything. And no ghosts have come for us. So what gives?”  
“That’s it,” Isaac said. “That’s…it’s about the ghosts. Or, no, it’s not about them at all. It’s about you–I–we–”  
“What are you talking about?”  
Isaac sighed into the dark. An amorphous indigo spirit swam through the walls of Max’s room and for a second, the two boys could see each other. Confusion and hurt on each other’s faces; exhaustion hanging over the air. The room went dark again, and quiet, and individually, they both decided to stare at the ceiling  
“The truth is…” Isaac fumbled with his words, at a loss, leaving Max in the dark. Torn between patience and frustration, a voice in the back of his head whispered, Then you know how Isaac feels.  
“You’ve been here a while,” Isaac said. “You’re not so new anymore and you’re getting to understand how things work. And since that started happening, things have gotten kind of quiet. I mean, I don’t know what you expect from Mayview, but we haven’t had any major ghost attacks since you got here. That’s dull for us. It’s like I can see the Activity Club finding a routine, getting into its groove, and just like last time…I’m not a part of it.  
“The thing is, before you showed up I was on my own. Like, a lot. Isabel and Ed, they connect and I don’t. They live together, how am I supposed to compete with that? Spender tells them things that they don’t tell me. I know it. And you…  
“I don’t know,” Isaac groaned. “I just wanted you to…like, I mean…I thought if I came here, or if we did some stupid patrol, that we could–”  
“I get it.”  
“You do?”  
Isaac dared to turn his head. Max could see him out of the corner of his eye, face redder than Max had ever seen it. He rolled back over, and Max could practically feel him trying not to bury his face in his hands.  
“Isaac, you’re not alone here,” Max told him. “I mean it. I know you think Isabel and Ed leave you out because they don’t care, but it’s not true. They’re your friends. I’m your friend. We care about you, okay?  
“And I am sticking with you, even if you don’t see it that way. So stop worrying. We’re on your side.”  
Isaac exhaled. “It’s not that simple.”  
“How about this kind of simple,” Max said. “Stay for breakfast tomorrow.”  
“Really?”  
“Yeah. My dad usually microwaves French toast in the morning, but we’ve got stuff downstairs. We can make pancakes. It’ll be fun.”  
Isaac was quiet for a moment. “Okay,” he agreed. “I’d like that.”  
“Yeah.” Max smiled, and he knew that Isaac could see it. “Me too.”


End file.
